The Rend

The Rend was a cosmic event instigated by the divine intervention of Ilseias, God of Balance, which separated the warring divines from the material realm of Luquastra and brought agency to the various peoples inhabiting the world. It is considered the start of Luquastran history and is taken as the zero on the Luquastran Calendar.

Description

Prior to the Rend, the divines were freely exerting their will and presence directly upon Luquastra, engaging in conflict with each other. Great wars were fought, during which many of the old divines were defeated for good. Among these conflicts, fought between the gods and their direct servants, the peoples of Luquastra were nothing but bystanders, losing their lives by the thousands as mere collateral damage. Many of the good-natured divines responded to this by purposely sheltering a number of people, or by fighting in defense of the people - yet the sheer scale difference between the war of the gods and the plights of the peoples still left too many to perish in this era of strife.
Ilseias, one of the more peaceful divines, heard the pleas and screams of the dying, and decided to act on behalf of the people's wishes: their desire for agency, self-determination. To that end, Ilseias reasoned that for the world to be of the people, it needed to be beyond the grasp of the gods. Together with His allies - Chauntea, Mystra, Sune, Helm, and Ilseias's own confidant Eldath - Ilseias resolved to separate the material and the divine, so that people may prosper and the state of the world may find its own balance.
On a fateful day at the heart of the landmass known as Asmarea, Ilseias's allies channeled all their divine energy into Him in order to partake in the potentially cataclysmic separation of the material and divine. When others such as Tempus and Loviatar found out about this, they rushed to stop Ilseias - but his allies protected Him. However, the immense surge of the full power of multiple gods proved unstable. What was intended to be a clean separation, instead surged out of Ilseias as an unimaginable beam of holy destruction, surging southward. This created the Cloven Trench, a deep narrow sea at the heart of modern Asmarea.
As more and more divines rushed to inspect the event or put a stop to it, Ilseias burst with a holy light, and the crack in reality that formed drew in all the remaining gods by sheer force. When all were transported to the other side, Ilseias reformed and spoke the Holy Word to the people who had come to bear witness: "Thus, this world is yours." He then vanished, believed to have joined His kin in the divine realm.

Aftermath

All of the thirty divines believed to have been absorbed into the new divine realm are still worshipped to this day. Although the divines are no longer able to act physically upon Luquastra, they can still act through the wills and actions of their followers and chosen champions. While exceedingly difficult, it is possible through divine magic to pierce the veil between the divine and material for a moment, allowing sporadic incidences of divine intervention throughout history. The divine realm can also be accessed by extremely powerful mortals, such as during the Spellplague.
The site of the Rend, known as the Worldsplitter's Holster, remained home to the people who had witnessed Ilseias's final words and chosen to dedicate themselves to his worship. After the arrival of the worshippers of other divines, this community eventually evolved into the Holy City of Hymnis. Their descent from the original witnesses is what empowers them in their eyes to decide on the nature of religion in Luquastra. Whether this is true or not is heavily debated.
Between the different churches of the divines, debate continues to be held over whether Ilseias's decision was justified. Some, like the Church of Tempus, deride the decision, believing that eternal war would have driven people to become ever stronger. Others, like the Church of Tyr, have judged Ilseias's decision to be a fair one. Regardless, many throughout Luquastra regard Ilseias as the God of Mankind, and venerate him above other divines as the one who saved all.